Here’s how fucking retarded I am. Are you ready for this? I decide — for the first time in maybe five years — that I’m going to take Nicci up on her offer to spend the day on the beach in Santa Monica. I despise the beach. I hate having to wear a bathing suit because I’m an insecure piece-of-shit pussy, sitting out in the sun makes me dehydrated (and I have suffered from sunstroke at least twice in the past), and somehow I always manage to get burnt.
My worst sunburned experience happened in July of 2005 when I was right in the middle of my cross-country book-writing excursion. I spent three or four days in Austin, Texas. I’ve been trying to locate the daily weather reports for those days online, but I can’t find it. All I remember is, it was fucking hot. I was waiting for Craig Stewart to call me about an interview, and I decided to wait out by the Hampton Inn rooftop swimming pool. I was reading Aldous Huxley, writing in my journal, and listening to my iPod. Before I knew it, a few hours had passed. I never thought to apply any suntan lotion. It was a dumb mistake, and it was entirely my fault, but I wound up with some of the worst burns imaginable. I couldn’t wear a shirt or shower for three days, and by the time I reached Matt’s house in Tucson the peeling of my shoulders resembled a snake shedding its skin. It was fucking gross. I was pulling three or four inches of skin off at a time. Before that, it hurt to just sit in my car, or sit in a chair, or lay in bed, or do anything, really. I was red like an apple for almost a week, and in near-constant pain. No aloe, no soothing balms or ointments, just a charred husk of a man. I vowed from that day on I would always…always wear suntan lotion. That is, if I ever decided to even venture out into the sun again.
Nicci has been talking about going to the beach with me for some time now, so I figured (as someone who doesn’t enjoy the beach), the quicker I got it over with, the better I would feel about requesting our next day off be spent…I don’t know…out of the sun somewhere. Maybe in a dank basement, listening to moldy records.
I guess that’s sort of a lie. I wanted to please the girl, so I cast aside all my insecurities and tried my hardest to forget about the bad sun-related experiences I’ve had, and agreed to spend the day in Santa Monica.
We set down our blanket and towels a few yards from the shoreline, and spent five minutes or so applying copious amounts of sunscreen. Sort of. At one point, Nicci mentioned how her legs never burned, so she never saw fit to apply any lotion on her legs. I took this as meaning that nobody’s legs ever had burned before, in the history of sunbathing. So, I ignored my legs. What a mistake.
As I was driving back to Echo Park just thirty minutes ago, I started to feel like maybe I was sitting next to a radiator, or someone had snuck a space heater under the driver’s-side seat of my car. When I got inside the house, I was shocked to see that a huge chunk of my right leg was bright pink. I don’t know how the fuck I managed to only burn one half of one of my legs, but it’s really annoying me right now, and it’s making me wish that I wasn’t literally retarded when I was processing the information about Nicci’s legs never burning. I feel like a Goddamned moron, and I deserve it.
So, once again, for the second time this decade, I’ve decided that I’m never going out in the sun again. I’ll just stay in my dank basement listening to moldy records all day, all summer long. And I don’t even have a basement. Maybe I’ll just stay in bed all summer and listen to the sounds of local kids having fun running through sprinklers, and the songs of the various neighborhood ice cream trucks screaming up and down the street. Fuck those people and their high tolerance to UV radiation. I hope they burn in hell.
Or in Santa Monica.
Or Long Beach. Or Laguna. Or Redondo. Or Huntington. Or Venice.
Or anywhere outside, on any planet that claims at least one sun.
Muse – Sunburn [acoustic] – (buy this album)
Sunburned Hand Of The Man – Adult Costume – (buy this album)
Sunburned Hand Of The Man – The Parakeet Beat – (buy this album)
Sunburned Hand Of The Man – Gather ‘Round – (buy this album)
I don’t know if anybody actually followed through with my request to sign the petition to oppose the Chicago promoter’s ordinance, but if you did…thank you. The ordinance has been tabled, for now. The city council will not vote on legislation until after they have engaged the music community so their concerns can be heard. Hopefully the council will retool the negative attributes of the law and make the recommended changes in order to ensure Chicago’s underground and independent communities can continue to thrive.
Also, some eBay auctions are ending soon. Bid now.
